A blog by Onkar Kedia. Poems, thoughts on random issues, pictures clicked by me - I dish out whatever I feel like sharing.

Sunday, June 05, 2016

175. Just ignore them

Indian media recently has been full of stories about a video about Sachin Tendular and Lata Mangeshkar. Days after the video surfaced, the reporting refuses to cease. The maker of the video is a person with a weird sense of humour. In fact, I doubt if the intention of the maker was humour at all. In the name of humour, often people try to dish out things which can shock, surprise and offend others. The intention is to get quick publicity. Doing something good and earning a reputation is a much more path to take. Running down people is an easier and quicker route. And if those being run down are widely respected, the route is even shorter. People will then react vehemently and media will give as much space as possible to the perpetrator and his 'creation'.I also fell to the designs of the maker of the video like many others. I immediately looked for the video on the Youtube to check for myself if it was as shocking as media was reporting. I felt that the video was much more offensive. When Virat Kohli was getting compared with Sachin, the maker of the video presumed that Sachin, one of the greatest ever cricketers, would be naturally upset. This is the starting point and the humour continues to slide thereafter and reaches its bottom when Sachin suggests that Lata had lived long enough and had no business to continue to burden the earth. How could she shamelessly continue to live? Nothing can be more disgusting than this. I felt depressed after watching the video.Expectedly, many were up in arms against the maker of the video. Their abuses were strewn all over the media. These were all well deserved. But I was aghast to see that the maker had some supporters as well. They were talking of how a 'small slip' could bring a comedian within the firing range and how freedom of expression needed to be protected.I have nothing to say about small slip. If this is small, I don't know what is big. About freedom of expression, I feel that such acts are the biggest threats to freedom of expression. These become alibi to curb freedom of expression. If people start killing others with kitchen knives, we may not be left with any knives to cut vegetables. Lata is believed to have reacted by saying that undue importance should not be given to those who thrive on maligning people. Khushwant Singh also used to say the same thing. Giving undue importance to such people is falling prey to their designs. I am satisfied that my post carries neither his name nor his photo. I am sure, he will not come to know about my post, but if he does, he will be grossly disappointed not to find his name and photo.